Usage of cellular or mobile telephones is very popular and common. In a typical arrangement for use of a mobile telephone, a user subscribes to a mobile telephone service offered by a mobile telephone operator or carrier and enters into, for example, a pre-paid or post-paid plan with the mobile telephone operator. A pre-paid subscription plan is usually an arrangement where the user pays in advance for the telephone services to be used over a future period of time. A post-paid subscription plan is usually an arrangement where the user pays for the telephone services after using the services.
The services available using the mobile telephone may be voice services (i.e., making and receiving telephone calls), messaging services such as Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Service (MMS), data services such as Internet browsing or Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browsing, video calls, downloading content, streaming content, purchasing applications such as games or other software, using location, guidance or navigation services, finding information, and communicating with a group of people and others.
The popularity of mobile telephones has also enabled their use, along with related infrastructure, as a media for providing mobile marketing, i.e., advertisements to the users of the telephones.
An issue arises when advertisements of a mobile marketing campaign or other messages are sent to the mobile telephones of subscribers who are not using their home communications network operated by the mobile telephone operator, e.g., they are using a roaming network such as an international roaming network. Although a Home Location Register (HLR) managed by the mobile telephone operator indicates the subscriber's roaming status, it does not affect the communications to the subscriber and therefore does not prevent the forwarding of the advertisements to the roaming subscriber. Delivery of advertisements or messages to a roaming subscriber may be wasteful as the user may not be in a position to respond to the advertisements or messages and may be costly to the subscriber as roaming charges for delivery of such advertisements or messages may be significantly higher than if the subscriber were located in the home network.